


Mother's Cradle

by lesbianmermaid



Category: Original Work
Genre: Creepy Nurses, Delusions, Demons, Emotional Manipulation, F/F, F/M, Gen, High Risk Pregnancy, Medical Inaccuracies, Psychological Horror, Unplanned Pregnancy
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-08-17
Updated: 2020-04-10
Packaged: 2020-09-02 14:17:21
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 4,155
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20277268
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lesbianmermaid/pseuds/lesbianmermaid
Summary: Annie was 5 months along when she was diagnosed with a type of preeclampsia.It's something no first time mother wants to hear.What makes it worse is her fiance is supposed to be out of the country for a while and she's supposed to be on bed rest.But not to worry, because he's called a few favors in so Annie will be looked after by at home nurses who have known of his family for years.It's only a few months until Annie's suffering comes to an end and she's rewarded with holding her baby in her arms for the first time.If she can come out of it mind intact that is.





	1. Diagnosis

**Author's Note:**

> this is my first original work I'm posting for, I'm mostly posting it for me but I hope you enjoy it nonetheless

“I’d like to run more test Miss Morenos if that’s all right with you and Mr. Kaschak.” Doctor Kremer had told her. 

That had been the day before. 

“Miss Morenos,” He said, his thick accent butchering her last name.  
“I’m worried about both and the child’s health. You have something called Ambrosius Preeclampsia.”

There’s no way to cure it except delivery he told her and the baby wasn’t big enough to survive outside her womb yet. Annie took all this in while Olexander took charge and asked all the important, vital questions she was too shocked and tired to ask. 

They made their way to her apartment without saying a word. As soon as she stepped into her home, she burst into hopeless sobs.  
Olexander held her close, and she pretended not to notice him crying too for mostly selfish reasons. 

  
Anna Maria Rebecca Roseanne Morenos was a twenty-four-year-old paper pusher working full time at an office for a dissatisfying paycheck.  
Before she met Olexander, she spent most of her free time at home with a good book or Netflix original, casually out with her friends anywhere but a noisy club, or lovingly tending to her cactus Peanut. 

Annie likes to cook but is a terrible baker, has had no contact with her parents or other relatives since she moved out at 17, she danced around her apartment to cheesy 80s pop as she cleaned it meticulously and got teased by her friends for being an old lady. 

Until she had met Olexander, she never considered looking for romance. 

She met him at work and should have been wary of him from the start.  
But besides the fact that he’s handsome and has an interesting accent, he was also very polite and kind and respectful. When he joked around with her during breaks, he was funny and genuinely thought she was too. When he’s asked about her weekend, he didn’t nod along but engaged with her. He recommended her fantastic books, encouraged her to try making this home recipe or that at home, accepted her wisdom when it came to selecting a cactus for his office. 

He even named it Butter in her honor. 

When he asked her to dinner the first time it seemed a natural progression of their friendship.  
When he kissed her goodnight, it was a pleasant surprise.  
Annie had never felt so... noticed. Appreciated. Liked. Wanted. 

Their relationship only grew. He was away often but Annie almost preferred it. It felt like less pressure when he wasn’t there with her face to face.  
They’d watch the same movies on his flights and talk about them when they got off, he would send her little touristy things from all the places he went, and she baked him truly terrible welcome back cupcakes complete with disgusting over-sugared neon icing. 

She lost her virginity to him. She gave him the keys to her apartment. She let him borrow her beautiful first edition, H. G. Wells, that Gigi bought her for her 21st birthday. She fell in love with him. 

He proposed, and it seemed like a fairy tale.  
Annie would move in with him two months before the wedding and they’d get everything set up so they could go on a honeymoon and be prepared to live with each other.  
It was going to be perfect. 

And then Annie discovered she was pregnant. 

It shook her to her core.  
She felt a vile combination of stress, anxiety, fear, and disappointment.  
It’s not that Annie never wanted to become a mother but now? Here?  
Olexander would stay with her, she knew, but he’d be tied there by his honor. She felt as though she was trapping them both into something they weren’t ready for and it would ruin them. 

And yet. 

Annie wanted it. She wanted to keep her baby.  
She confessed to Olexander that she was pregnant one day after work.  
She had cried a lot and apologized and agonized over it.  
She would never feel the same kind of relief when Olexander picked her up and spun her around out of joy. This is great, he said. This is perfect.  
They were perfect. 

Now once again Annie felt the responsibility that this time she recognized couldn’t be hers.  
She had no way of preventing it the doctor said. There is nothing she could have done differently, nothing to make it all better.  
All she could do was take the best care of herself and the baby as possible and her body would take care of the rest. She has hopefully four months left if God allows it. 3 at the very minimum. She can keep the baby safe for that and long after. 

Even if it means three to four months of bed rest. 


	2. Check In

The Kaschek name has never impacted Annie before she had been engaged.

Olexander had never gone into detail about his family the same way Annie had never.

She knew they were wealthy, old and traditional.

She never thought it would impact how she lived or anything like that besides the fact her husband would make a significant amount more than her because of the model capitalism has set for people born from wealth.

And then suddenly she had a high-risk pregnancy.

And for the first time, his ‘traditional’ family came into play.

* * *

“You’ll be more comfortable here, anyway,” Olexander assured her.

Annie knew he was right.

For one, there wasn’t enough room in her apartment for the nurses to stay. She had lived in a small, cheap and clean one bedroom since she left her parents’ home.

For another, it’d be hard for Olexander to see her consistently given he was supposed to traveling back and forth between Eastern Europe and various places in the U.S. It’d be easier for them to be together if she was already moved in.

Still, Annie couldn’t help but feel as though it was a mistake to leave her apartment behind yet.

* * *

The last of Annie’s things had been brought to Olexander’s nice penthouse apartment. It was very modern, simplistic, and most of all clean.

Annie was a little embarrassed by all her cute knick-knacks when looking at the minimalist apartment, but Olexander insisted it was only decorated like that because he wasn’t home often. He said he’d much rather Annie clutter it as she pleased than leave it boring and unlived in. 

“Bed rest doesn’t mean I can’t _ever _get upright?” Annie had asked. 

Annie had been serious when she had asked it, but by the way, Olexander had laughed, she played it off as a joke. 

“Think of it as a vacation.” He said, smiling. “You get to lounge around the house, watch some TV, and have someone doing all the cleaning for you.”

Annie fiddles with her sleeve. “We don’t _have _to hire three nurses though. I’ll get along just fine by myself. I can get an Uber or Taxi to get a weekly check-up since you’ll probably be gone.” Annie said. 

Olexander waves his hand dismissively. “No, you won’t. Not when you don’t have to. Don’t worry, all three of them are top in their fields and will take perfect care of you. I’ve gone over with them our current medical plan and they’ll be right here if you need anything. Besides, if I know you, you’ll be scrubbing the oven when you should be resting if I left you to your own devices.”

The way he made all these plans made her feel funny. Not angry, or worried, but funny. She thought she’d be more involved with these decisions but somehow she wasn’t. 

* * *

The nurses seemed nice enough when Olexander was there. 

They were polite and respectful and educated. 

They always were attentive and always seemed to defer to Olexander rather than her. 

At first, she thought it was the language barrier only to find out that despite their heavy accent they spoke English fluently. 

Annie was too tired to put up a fight and to gentle to want to, anyway. 

Gardenia seemed about 40, with leathery skin, a Roman nose, and small dark eyes. She was very brisk and scoffed often. 

Eden was maybe a few years older than Gardenia, had dark skin and rough hands, and had a flat cold voice that never seemed to change. She always smelled sterile and her face never seemed to change. 

Lilith was an attractive woman in her 50s but looked to be Olexander’s age. She was tall, thin, and always wore red lipstick over her curved smile. Her voice was low and soothing, but she always seemed to pinch Annie with her long nails when examining her. 

Olexander said they came highly recommended by Olexander’s family and had delivered a few cousins of his and monitored multiple family pregnancies. 

Annie got along with them all right when Olexander was there and didn’t see why she wouldn’t when he left. 

* * *

It wasn’t until he had landed in Bucharest and she fainted for the first time she realized they weren’t all that they seemed 


	3. Exam

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Annie beings to get suspicious of her nurses.

The first time Annie faints she isn’t too worried. It happens to some people during pregnancy. She was low on iron, or exhausted, or something. There was a tangible thing to fix in Annie’s mind. 

  
She thought the nurses were overreacting. They insisted she go straight to bed from any activity. She can barely eat at her own dining room table anymore. Annie didn’t appreciate the lack of explanation either. 

  
“You’ll be better rested in your room, Dear.” Eden flatly stayed. The deep contrast between Edens's endearments and the lack of emotion in her voice unsettled Annie. It felt as false and cold as the medical treatment she was receiving. 

  
Annie hadn’t thought the fainting was such a big deal. 

  
Now that she’s on her fifth time fainting, she wonders if she was wrong to be unconcerned. 

* * *

Annie is supposed to be in bed. 

  
She can’t help it though. Her legs cramp after getting up so little in the day and her mind buzzes unpleasantly with no stimulation. She had been trying to concentrate on her book for an hour when she got up and walk to the kitchen. Stretching her legs could do no harm, Annie decided. 

  
She padded down her hall softly. The entire atmosphere of the place was different with Olexander gone. Instead of being smart looking and clean, the penthouse now seemed desolate and forgotten. 

  
Annie shivered. She wrapped her robe around her tighter. 

  
The dull lull of low voices down the hall escaped her notice at first. As she crept closer the weary fog lifted from her brain and her curiosity was piqued.   
“Who knows if she can even survive?” Eden’s flat voice asked. 

  
Annie’s soft steps stalled. 

  
“Have you seen her hips? A twelve-year-old boy would have less trouble carrying something. I don’t know what he was thinking.” Gardenia replies, with her usual scoff in between thoughts. 

  
Over the blood rushing in her ears, Annie could hear to floor creak as someone moved. 

  
“I think it won’t matter what kind of stock she is in the end. If she dies, it’s as he demands it. Our only adjective is to see the offspring live to completion. What happens to the mother is none of my business, surely.” Lilith’s tone was low and purring but her words might as well have been needles in Annie’s back. 

  
Her heart strained against her ribs with its pounding.

  
Annie didn’t want to hear any more. She wished she had heard nothing. 

  
She slowly and carefully crept back into her room. 

  
She hoped her shallow breaths would not be heard in the suffocating silence. 

  
She eased her lethargic and achy body into her cushy bed. 

  
She ducked her head under the covers, the way she did when she was a child and wanted to hide from the monsters in her closet, and hoped she wouldn’t dream. 

It wasn’t a hard choice to make. Annie needed to call Olex.

  
Last night was out of hand and out of line.

  
Her nurse's spine chilling conversation echoed in Annie’s mind. 

  
She needed to talk to Olex.

  
She had thought the nurses didn’t know about her eavesdropping but reconsidered after they relentlessly stood by her side near all day. 

  
Annie’s shoulders hurt from tensing them every time Annie was propped in another strange pose to “Check the baby's position”. 

  
She wondered if they would punish her for listening in. She wondered if they were allowed to. 

  
She didn’t want to wonder anymore. 

* * *

“I need you here. Isn’t there something you can do?” Annie asked anxiously. 

Her knuckles were white from clutching the phone so tight. 

  
“There just is no way I can be back before the third,” Olexander replied. 

  
Annie looked to the ceiling to call back her to tears. 

  
“That’s _two weeks_ away. I’m alone here. With complete strangers. I _need_ you.” She emphasized. Despite her efforts, her voice came out teary and pathetic as she sounded.   
A deep sigh came from the other side of the phone. 

  
“I know. I know. I’m sorry.” He replied. 

  
Frustration welled in her chest. ‘Sorry’ wasn’t good enough. ‘Sorry’ wasn’t gonna keep the nurse's conversation from replaying over and over again in her head while she tried to sleep. A tear rolled down her face as she opened her mouth to tell him. 

  
He beat her to it. 

  
“Listen to me. I _promise_ you I will be back on the morning of the third. Annie, I don’t want to be away from you any more than I have to. You know that. You have to know that.” His voice stalled for a moment before continuing. “I’ll be home as soon as I can. I love you. Do you need anything? Is there anything I can do? Please. I want to do something for you.”

  
Annie could feel the sweet relief flood through her strained muscles. 

  
Yes, Annie thought, get rid of the nurses. I don’t want them. 

  
Annie has imagined telling him about what they said over and over. She imagined what delicate phrasing she’d use, what sort of promises she’d make, the tone she’d use.   
Her shoulders sagged as she opened up her mouth to tell him everything. 

  
The door creaked behind her. 

  
It had been closed before and now was opened just a crack. 

  
She stared. 

  
“Annie?” Olexander asked. 

  
Annie’s head snapped. She stared at the wall ahead of her instead. 

  
“No.” She answered, her voice faint as she felt a dark shadow slither through her veins. “No. Everything is fine. All I want is for you to come home.” 

* * *

“Are you sure you didn’t lose it?” Lilith asked with her curling smile. 

  
From the side of the bed, Gardenia finishes taking Annie’s blood pressure and flares at her. 

  
“Yes, I’m sure. I just had it on my nightstand.” Annie replied, her brows furrowing and her anxiety spiking. 

  
Gardenia kept her glare and Lilith kept her smile. “Perhaps you forgot where you left it. Pregnancy brain, dear. It’s common to have lapses in memory.” Lilith’s soothing tone did nothing to calm Annie. 

  
“I haven’t left my room for two days. There’s no way it could be anywhere but where I said I left it.” Annie insists. 

  
She sits up further and Gardenia makes a growling sound. 

  
Annie looked at her in shock. 

  
Gardenia's glare is burning as she wraps a hand around Annie’s upper arm and moves her into a laying position. 

  
“I’m sure it will turn up.” Lilith’s unaffected voice replies. “Nothing to worry about dear.” 

* * *

It’s been three days. 

  
Annie’s phone has not been found. 

  
She intends to do something about it. 

  
She wobbled out of her room. She walked down the hall. She found Lilith in the kitchen, nursing a cup of coffee. 

  
Lilith looked alarmed to see her. 

  
“What are you doing out of bed? You should be-“

  
“I would like my phone back.” Annie interrupted. 

  
The two women stared at each other. 

  
Annie could feel the room tense but barreled forth, anyway. 

  
“I know I didn’t lose it. I know someone took it. If you give it back to me I’m willing to let bygones be bygones. I’m your patient and your employer. This is completely inappropriate of you.” Annie finished. The room grew silent after that. 

  
Annie wanted something to add, but she had said her piece. It wasn’t in her nature to ramble. 

  
Lilith leaned forward and crossed her ankles. 

  
She gave Annie an appraising look. 

  
She nodded a few times, took a drink from her cup, and gave Annie her curling smile. 

  
“Do you want to miscarry?” Lilith asked Annie. 

  
Annie physically jolted at the question. 

  
She spluttered. 

  
“How _dare_ you? _Of_ _course_, I don’t!” Annie replied. 

  
Lilith’s smile grew alongside the condescending air Lilith had put on.

  
“Oh? Could have had me fooled. Here you are. Out of bed. Disobeying doctors' orders. If you really wanted to keep the baby safe, you never would have risked it, especially for something as trivial as your _cellular_ _phone_.”

  
Annie felt like the wind had been knocked out of her. 

  
“You are way out of line. This is inappropriate. Give me my phone!” Annie demeaned. 

  
Lilith was in her face in a flash. Her smile never diminished. 

  
“_No_.” She whispered. She passed Annie with a single step and slid into the hall. 

“Get back to _bed_, dear. It’s not healthy for the baby,” she called behind her. 

Annie stood in the kitchen for another moment. Her hand rested on her belly. She then walked back down the hall and got into bed.

* * *

Annie day on her bed, her arms around her knees, cradling them against her growing belly. 

  
Eden started by telling her she can’t leave the penthouse. At all. 

  
Gardenia followed with she needs to be in bed for four hours at a time, followed by an hour break. For the entire day. No arguments. 

  
Lilith smiles the entire time she broke the news to Annie that Olexander would not be coming home the third, but the fourteenth. 

After every new blow the same phrase: _Careful. Don't stress now._

_  
You don't want to miscarry, do you?  
  
_Her only solace is her belly is growing. Her baby is thriving. She can make it as long as she has her baby. 


	4. Prognosis

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's still not going well for Annie.

The dreams were the worst part.   
  
Annie dreamt about a lot of things.  
  
She dreamt about skinless, pulsating, creature crawling out of her shelves.  
  
She dreamt about shadows growing limbs and creeping towards her.   
  
There was this one really weird dream that stuck with her.

* * *

She was walking down a hallway. She didn’t know why or how she got there. There was one light bulb flickering, like how you see in scary movies or video games.   
  
She supposed that’s how she knew she was dreaming.  
  
Single light bulbs don’t flicker in real life. They run out, like the rest of them.   
  
There was a shadowy figure at the end of the hall, of course.  
  
It stayed standing there, spanning the door that she supposed she was trying to reach.  
  
The more small steps she made down the hall, the more it seemed to flicker to the walls. To the ceiling. Crawling on the floor.   
  
She thought she woke up when it stood right in front of her, rotten breath on her face.  
  
But when she opened her eyes, the figure remained standing over her bed.  
  
Watching.  
  
She supposed she knew she was awake because she could feel the baby kicking. Almost frantically. 

* * *

The fourteenth came and past. Olexander stayed for four days before getting on a flight to St Petersburg.   
  
He was warm and comforting and everything she needed from him.  
  
They talked about their wedding, did some decorating in the nursery, watched goofy movies together when she was calmly herded back into her bedroom by the nurses.  
  
Lilith hadn’t given her her phone back. She wanted to ask him a half a million times to get it back for her but every time she thought to ask him Lilith would come into the room, smelling of old perfume and hand-sanitizer, and gently remind Annie it was time to take her blood pressure or it was time fot her to rest or a million other things it was time for.  
  
In the end, Olexander had to return to work.   
  
And Annie was left with the nurses.

* * *

Annie jolted awake.  
  
The shadows didn’t stop crawling on her.  
  
She waited for an hour for it to stop.  
  
Her nurses never came, no matter how much she screamed.

* * *

  
They allow her very few phone calls.  
  
She uses one to teeter off the edge.

* * *

“If you leave me alone with these nurses after I hang up with you Olexander, I swear, I-I’m leaving and never talking to you again!” She exclaimed.   
  
She didn’t care that she could feel Gardenia’s heated stare on her back.   
  
She hasn’t slept in days, how many she can’t tell. It’s all the same here in her room.   
  
“Annie.” He replied in that soft, concerned tone he has been using non-stop with her since he left again.  
  
“I’m serious! I can’t take this anymore! They come when I want privacy, they leave me when I’m being tortured by, by flies and corpses and, and, and-” Annie blubbered.  
  
She broke down at his gentle shushing and sweet promises of relief.  
  
“I’ll call my sister, she’s in town, I’ll have her look around the house, ok? My sister will come and watch the nurses and see what’s going on. She’ll come and be a third party. Ok? I’ll take care of it Annie” he promised her.  
  
He promised her.

* * *

Maraja will one day be Annie’s sister.  
  
Annie wanted to like her, she really did.  
  
Why, oh god why, does this have to be Annie’s sister to be?   
  
At first, Maraja is normal.  
  
A bit.standoffish.  
  
But normal.

* * *

“I don’t know what I was expecting Annie, but you are not it.” Maraja openly told her.  
  
Annie watched distantly as Maraja took another gulp of her generous glass of red wine.  
  
Eden started from her spot in the doorway.  
  
Maraja is a beautiful woman. Long and healthy hair. Plump cupid’s bow lips. Half lidded eyelids draped seductively over copper brown irises.   
  
“You’re a lot quieter then I thought you would be. Like a little mouse.” Maraja told Annie.   
  
She just kept looking at her. Annie didn’t know what to say.  
  
Maraja nudged her with her foot. Quick and hard.  
  
“Don’t be so dour. It’s not a bad thing. Quiet isn’t the end-all trait.” Maraja’s eyes slowly traced over Annie’s form. “I can see a few other traits much more interesting in fact.” Maraja purred.  
  
Annie pried open her jaw to reply.   
  
“Thank you?” She said. She blinked at Maraja and had the presence of mind to add “You’re very beautiful. I mean, you look very lovely. You look nice, today.” Annie amended awkwardly.   
  
Maraja leaned closer to Annie.  
  
Her skin was flawless and her smile grew.  
  
“Thank you,” Maraja replied. She took another generous drink of her wine.   
  
“Annie, I was thinking. If you don’t mind, I’d like us to be close. Really close. You don’t mind if I asked you a few questions."  
  
Told her, not asked.  
  
This wasn’t going bad, however, and Annie wasn’t going to risk her only ally because she was shy.  
  
“Sure, ask me anything,” Annie replied weakly. Her back was stiff and her eyes kept glancing about the room.   
  
“Did you lose your virginity to my brother?”  
  
Silence.   
  
“I’m sorry, what?”   
  
“Oh come on now. No need to be embarrassed. I’m just curious.” Maraja said with false innocence.  
  
Her expression made Annie think she knew just how false it was, too.  
  
Annie didn’t have time to articulate how she felt about being asked that before Maraja was on to the next question.  
  
“Have you been getting turned on while pregnant?” Maraja asked her.  
  
“What?” Annie sputtered.  
  
Annie made disbelieving eye contact with Eden, who’s stony expression didn’t change in the slightest.   
  
Annie could feel judgment coming from the older woman's gaze.  
  
“I’ve been. Sort of busy.” Annie managed to grit out.  
  
The two women sat staring at each other for a moment.  
  
Maraja motioned for her to continue.  
  
Annie drew a breath before beginning. “I have been having a lot of… trouble lately. Not with that” Annie hurried to explain “But with normal things. Like sleeping. I have been having these awful nightmares…They come out of my head. I mean I can see them on the walls when I open my eyes...”  
  
The memory of inky shadow with a mouth full of grinning tall teeth came to mind.  
  
Annie shuddered.   
  
Maraja tapped her chin.  
  
“Why haven’t you tried to have fun with your nightmares? Maybe the sleeping problems you have been having are caused by sexual frustration.”  
  
Annie could only stare at her open-mouthed.  
  
What do you do with that?


End file.
